A writer-friend was blocked. Three thousand words into writing a new story, he still didn’t know what to call it. All forward progress on writing the actual story had stopped, as he was flummoxed by his lack of a good title for his work-in-progress. In desperation, he turned to social media…
That’s where I found him, floundering, flailing, collecting bad advice, and wasting a lot of energy spinning his wheels and going nowhere. Concerned, I stepped in and offered him my one piece of crucial advice on titles. Now, I now present it to you:
Remember: it’s a working title. You will change it later. Now stop worrying about the damned title and get back to work on the story. The story is what matters. No editor ever bought a lousy story because it had a great title.*
I know; as a writer who is world-famous for one particular story title, that advice seems at least a bit off, if not downright hypocritical. But for me, “Cyberpunk” was that rarest of things: a story that had one title and one title only, from the day I began writing the first page of the first draft to the day it was finally published. For the two years it took me to get that story accepted, as it bounced around the offices of every editor at every major magazine in the field, the rejection letters that came back always commented on the story, and not its in hindsight obviously brilliant title.
As I said, that story was the exception. Most of my stories go through at least four or five working titles between the time I begin sketching out the first draft and the time it’s finally published. Usually these title changes take place during the writing and editing phase, as I develop a clearer sense of what my story is about. In more than a few cases, though, the final title change came to me after I’d begun shopping the story around and collecting rejection slips.
That was one of the advantages of working in the good old/bad old days of actual paper manuscripts and mailed submissions. Every few weeks I got the opportunity to tear open an envelope and look at one of my manuscripts with fresh eyes and what turned out to be my developing editor’s sensibilities, and to ask myself: “If I was an editor, would I read past the first page of this?”
Believe me, it was therapeutic. One of my stories was rejected eighteen times before I finally looked at it and realized that while the core of the story was sound and the first page was perfect, the title was terrible. Whereupon I gave the story a quick tune-up-and-tightening edit, trimmed about 500 words of flab out of the middle, sharpened the point of the ending, christened it with a new title—again, another snappy, fresh, one-word neologism—and then sold it to a pro market on the next submission.
Ergo, after 40 years in the writing racket, here are my guidelines for story titles. Some of this comes from my personal experience as a writer. The rest comes from spending the past ten years wading through the thousands of submissions that have shown up in the Stupefying Stories slush pile.
- Remember, it’s a working title. Expect to change it later. Pick a stub title and move on.
- Simple and descriptive titles work best.
- Don’t overdo descriptive, though. Avoid titles that telegraph the ending.
- Avoid titles that are puns. They’re rarely as funny as you imagine they are.
- Utterly original titles are overrated. Don’t steal titles, but don’t sweat its being too much like another story, book, or movie’s title.
- Avoid obscurantism. There was a time when titles like “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World” or “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” were in fashion. That time was more than fifty years ago.
- No editor ever bought a lousy story because it had a great title.*
- No editor ever rejected a great story solely because it had a lousy title. Except:
a. Avoid racist, sexist, and homophobic titles.
b. Avoid overtly disgusting titles. You may think it’s gross-out humor, but slush pile readers are unlikely to agree.
c. Avoid overtly offensive titles. You may think you’re leading with your best Harlan Ellison tough guy attitude, but again, editors are unlikely to agree.
d. Remember, your title is just a reference tag. What you want the editor to do is not to be stopped by it, but to get on with reading your first line, your first paragraph, your first page, and then to feel compelled to turn to the next page and keep going until they get to the end. - If an editor gets to the end and likes your story, but doesn’t like the title, they will quite likely suggest that you change it. If they do, again, this is not the time to emulate Harlan Ellison.
- Before you submit a story for publication, remember to make sure that the story title on the first page, the story title in the page headers, the story title in the file name, and the story title you mention in your cover letter all match. Few things confuse an editor more than receiving a submission that cites one title in the email subject line, a different title in the cover letter, and yet more titles in the manuscript. When confused by a submission, most editors’ default reaction is to hit reject.
- If an editor rejects a story, do them the courtesy of revising the story before slapping on another title and sending it back. Re my anecdote about selling a story that had been rejected eighteen times: yes, I did sell it to a market that previously had rejected it, but that was after I made significant changes to it besides changing the title.
- * Finally, the one exception to “No editor ever bought a lousy story because it had a great title” lies in Hollywood, where people routinely buy the film rights to titles and then throw away or completely rewrite the story behind the title. But if you’re not focused on selling the film rights first and the print edition later, this consideration doesn’t matter.
P.S. Yoo-hoo, Hollywood! The film rights to “Cyberpunk” are still available! Have your people call my people. Let’s do lunch!
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